Crooked Still “Still Crooked” (Signature Sounds)

Get rid of the pigeonholes. Here come’s Crooked Still — and Crooked Still isn’t about to be pigeonholed.

Like some pioneering groups that have broken, bent and respectfully bruised the traditional bluegrass mold, this Boston-based quintent simply will not fit into a category, not even newgrass or progressive grass where those other pioneers wound up. Crooked Still is, … uh, er, lemmethink, hmmm … well, Crooked Still is simply Crooked Still, contemporary acoustic music’s square peg.

Not that there’s much of anything simple about “Still Crooked,” the band’s latest CD, which was released last month on the Signature Sounds Recordings label. This is the group’s third CD, but for me, my first exposure to Crooked Still. I’ve listened to the new CD a few times, and I admit, I’m still shaking my head and wringing my hands at this group’s complexity.

Make no mistake, this is not anything like Mr. Monroe’s version of bluegrass. It has a fair share of bluegrass-style fiddling and banjo licks, and yes, even some nice old-timey string-band touches. But then, add in lots of cello (Whoa! That ain’t grass!), some bowed double bass and lead singer Aoife O’Donovan’s very unique voice with some non-traditional arrangements, and voila!, you have some rather crooked bluegrass.

If that introduction has you wondering where I’m going with all this, I’ll tell you: I thoroughly enjoyed the band, its songs and arrangements on this CD. Most of all, I was struck by the unique, off-the-wall nature of it all.

Crooked Still

No matter how talented a group is, everything eventually boils down to the song. And Crooked Still selected a bunch of good ones to turn inside out on this outing. Personal favorites here include the ancient Appalachian bloody killing song, “Poor Ellen Smith,” Mississippi John Hurt’s “Baby What’s Wrong with You” and the Ola Bell Reed tune, “Undone in Sorrow.”

The Ola Bell Reed tune kicks off off the CD, and only a few bars into the track, the listener gets a strong sense this is, to borrow a line from British comedy troupe Monty Python, something completely different. The first indication is O’Donovan’s eerily quiet and gentle voice — at times down to a haunting whisper and at its peak, showing a delicate, crystal-like quality that might shatter if it surpasses a certain volume. Before the listener has a chance to get accustomed to this wafer-thin vocal line, here comes some dramatic interplay between cellist Tristan Clarridge, bass player Corey DiMario and fiddler Brittany Haas. All that is nicely contrasted by banjo player Greg Liszt’s intricate doodling in this minor-key gem of a song.

Clarridge and Haas are relative newcomers to the group, which had previously performed as a quartet for about five years. The two came into the band after founding member and cellist Rushad Eggleston left the band last November.

According to information posted on www.crookedstill.com, all tracks for Still Crooked were recorded live in one room in Allaire, a studio in upstate New York.

“I was outside in the hallway, because my voice is so quiet,” O’Donovan says.

O’Donovan’s voice, is indeed quiet, sometimes almost too quiet, on some of the CD’s passage. Tricky business it must be mixing her vocal track to retain the whispers and shimmers but still keep the vocals in front of the instrumentation. The review copy I received of this release came in a barebones package. Hopefully, the finished product includes the lyrics, which would make this intriguing CD even more enjoyable listening than it is.

“It’s hard to pin down our music,” bass player DiMario says on the band’s Web site. “We play improvised old time music, bluegrass, folk and our own songs within the broad context of a string band. Like a lot of today’s bands, we have modern and traditional influences that confuse the boundaries. We want to keep blurring those lines to make something all our own.”

After this, my first introduction to Crooked Still, I’d say the lines are well blurred — and blurred well.

Pure bluegrass traditionalists are not going to like Still Crooked; in fact, they might not even make it past the first couple of tracks. But the fans out there who follow The Kruger Brothers, King Wilkie and the like are going to thorough enjoy Crooked Still. I’d highly recommend the group and this new CD to all but the purest of diehards.